With North Korea's Kim Jong Un extending an olive branch to Tokyo, high-level talks may be on the cards, but roadblocks remain, says this observer of East Asian politics.
With North Korea's Kim Jong Un extending an olive branch to Tokyo, high-level talks may be on the cards, but roadblocks remain, says this observer of East Asian politics.
North Korea’s outreach to Japan after more than four years of silence is causing much speculation about Pyongyang’s true intention and whether such a summit would materialise. After the failed Hanoi summit in February 2019, Abe softened the precondition in an offer of dialogue to Kim, but the North Korean leader was not interested because Kim understood that so long as the United States did not agree to sanctions relief, there was little Japan could provide North Korea.to fight the virus, Japan had to cancel the 2020 Summer Olympics. There were no sparks like the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics that could rekindle a Japan-North Korea dialogue.
It is not a coincidence that North Korea is only accepting the offer of dialogue with Japan now when it has significantly increased regional tension with Russian and Chinese backing. Kim Yo Jong inviting Kishida to visit Pyongyang is aSimilar to his predecessor Abe, Kishida suggested that he would be willing to meet Kim without any preconditions.